


The Thing with Feathers (Also Has A Beak And Claws)

by Roshwen



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Episode tag to S02E10 And the Final Curtain, Gen, Jenkins is sad, Light Angst, Set between S02 and S03, The LITs want to help
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 01:19:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12853644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roshwen/pseuds/Roshwen
Summary: The Library was fully functional again. Flynn and Eve were de-statued and for once, happily working together. There was no big, looming threat on the horizon, just your average, run-of-the-mill apocalypses of the week that were easily defeated. Everything was fine.Except there seemed to be something wrong with Jenkins.





	The Thing with Feathers (Also Has A Beak And Claws)

**Author's Note:**

> Can you imagine hoping for a legend to come true, and then it turns out not to be King Arthur, but fucking Flynn Carsen? I could. Enjoy!

The Library was fully functional again. Flynn and Eve were de-statued and for once, happily working together. There was no big, looming threat on the horizon, just your average, run-of-the-mill apocalypses of the week that were easily defeated.

Everything was fine.

Except.

Except there seemed to be something wrong with Jenkins.

At first, no one really noticed anything was off. Because it was _Jenkins._ He was always a little aloof. Prone to locking himself away in his lab to work on various nasty potions and concoctions. Snapping at them when they got in the way, calling them dolts and idiots and pretending he was waiting for the day they’d die and leave him alone.

He still did all that, but there was something not quite right about it. The aloofness was a little colder. He locked himself away in his lab for entire afternoons, and then, entire days. The snapping lost the secret fondness that was buried deep inside but instead got a biting tone.

Cassandra noticed it first, because when Jenkins told Jake to go back to Oklahoma and stop wasting his time, it felt like someone was dragging nails across a blackboard. But then one day, Ezekiel knocked at the door of Jenkins’ lab to ask if Jenkins had really met Napoleon because he of a bet he had made with Jake, and received such a scolding that he slammed the door to the lab shut, counted his breaths very carefully for a minute and then dragged Jake and Cassandra with him to the Library for an emergency meeting.

‘I don’t get it,’ Jake said as Cassandra surreptitiously rubbed a hand up and down Ezekiel’s back. ‘He was _fine._ After the whole Prospero thing, and before we got Flynn and Eve back, he was the only one keeping it together around here.’

‘Yeah well,’ Ezekiel said, surreptitiously leaning in to Cassandra’s touch. Jenkins yelling at him like that had been _scary._ ‘He’s not fine now. Not at all.’

‘I don’t think he’s been fine,’ Cassandra said. ‘He’s sounded weird ever since we got rid of Prospero. You just didn’t notice.’

Jake shot her a look. ‘And you didn’t say anything because…’

Cassandra shot him a look right back. ‘Because he’s _Jenkins._ I thought he was upset because of Flynn and Eve, just like us. And then I thought, well, he won’t thank us for getting up into his business so we’d better leave him alone for a bit and he’ll be alright in a few days.’

‘I’d rather fight another tentacle monster than asking Jenkins what’s up with his bloody temper,’ Ezekiel said, scrubbing a hand over his face. ‘But I think we might have no other choice here.’

‘We might have,’ Jake said. ‘If we figure out when this started, we might be able to find a cause without having to ask.’

Cassandra nodded before letting go of Ezekiel and getting up to grab one of her notebooks. ‘OK, timeline. We all agree he was fine before the Prospero case, right?’

Jake and Ezekiel nodded.

‘And after the Prospero case, but before Eve and Flynn got back?’ Cassandra asked.

Jake looked doubtful. ‘He looked okay. Busy cleaning up the Library, but so was I, so…’

‘We were all upset then,’ Ezekiel muttered, earning a surprised glance from Jake. ‘But after they got back, he looked as happy as ever. Or, you know. As happy as Jenkins ever looks.’

Jake shot Cassandra another look. ‘You just said he wasn’t fine then.’

Cassandra shook her head, biting her lip and staring at the notebook.

‘So something about the Prospero case set him off,’ Ezekiel said. ‘Great. Because that case was _mess.’_

When he got no reply, he looked to his left, where Cassandra was still staring wide-eyed at the notebook. ‘Oh no,’ she whispered. ‘Oh no, oh _god_ no. That stupid _, stupid…’_

She covered her mouth with her hand as slow tears started to slip down her cheeks. Now it was Ezekiel’s turn to put a hand on her shoulder and start rubbing soothing circles as Jake reached out and tugged the notebook free.

‘Excalibur,’ he read. ‘dash Arthur.’ He looked up with a frown. ‘Arthur? What’s he got to do with this?’

Cassandra swallowed and wiped at her eyes before she said, very softly: ‘It was something Jenkins told me while we were at Wilton House. You were looking around the room but he was just staring outside and I… I went up to him because he looked _so sad.’_ She sighed and wiped her eyes again, sniffling a little before Ezekiel gave up on the shoulder rubbing, wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close.

‘I remember,’ he muttered. ‘What was up with that?’

‘There’s a legend,’ Jake said slowly, looking at the notebook again. ‘When England is in need, Arthur will return. _He who wielded Excalibur before shall wield it again and save all England.’_ He looked from the notebook to Cassandra, his voice rough as he said: ‘Is that it? He was hoping Arthur would come back?’

‘Oh Jesus,’ Ezekiel whispered as Cassandra nodded. ‘He said… he said he would be so glad to see his old friend again, even though he knew he was dead,’ she said, voice muffled by Ezekiel’s shirt as he squeezed her tight.

‘Fuck,’ Jake said in a low voice.

‘Can you imagine,’ Cassandra started, then scrunched her eyes shut for a moment. ‘Can you imagine hoping for something that’s not going to happen, that _can’t_ happen and you know it, but you still… You still think it might? You still think that maybe, just _maybe,_ even though you know it’s silly and stupid and you _shouldn’t_ think that because it _can’t._ It _can’t_ happen.’

Ezekiel was holding her _very_ tight now.

‘And then it doesn’t happen,’ Jake finished, still in that low, heavy voice and looking at Cassandra with a sadness that was not just about Jenkins. ‘It doesn’t happen, even though you knew it wouldn’t. And you’re devastated.’

Cassandra slowly extricated herself from Ezekiel’s arms and nodded, studiously not looking at either of them.

‘So,’ Ezekiel said in a voice that did not sound wobbly at all, ‘what do we do now?’

\---

Lashing out at Ezekiel like that had been a mistake. Jenkins knew it. The boy had done nothing to deserve it, even though he had, without a doubt, the worst possible timing in all of history. The batch of dragon fire salve Jenkins had been working on was now completely ruined because Ezekiel’s question had come at the exact moment the phoenix tears should have been added. But if Jenkins was honest?

The salve had already been useless before that. Because he couldn’t _focus._

He had tried. He had _tried_ focusing, on his work, on getting the Library back in some semblance of order, on the cases the Nuisances were working on. God _knew_ he tried.

But as he scooped the last of the ruined salve into the bin and put away the array of vials and beakers on his workbench with hands that kept shaking, no matter how sternly he told himself to _stop_ , he also knew that all his attempts to focus had been pointless.

Because he was such a massive, massive _idiot._ A fool, worthy of a position at a Tudor court to allow himself that glimmer of hope. To even _think_ that it might be _possible_ for his King to return, even though he _knew_ Arthur was dead. Had been dead for almost fifteen hundred years. Killed by his own son in one of the most disastrous battles Jenkins had ever had the misfortune to fight.

It had been such a treacherous, irrational, _tempting_ thought. The vision of Arthur, rising from the lake with Excalibur held high above his head, thundering across the land to get rid of Prospero and everything else that was wrong with the world, for once and for all… All the pain and loneliness of the past centuries would have been worth it, if only Jenkins could have knelt before his King once again. If he could have heard Arthur call him by his name, his _real_ name just one more time.

If he could have been Galahad again. If only for a moment.

One of the vials crashed to the floor in a burst of shattered glass and Jenkins’ thoughts shattered with it.

_Damn._ He put the other beakers and vials safely away before he went down with a broom and dustpan, carefully sweeping up the splinters and ignoring the way the broom trembled across the floor. Glass glittered in the metal dustpan, then disappeared into the bin with a tinkling rush. Jenkins’ work was done, he had cleaned up, he could go. Retreat to his rooms and if he couldn’t keep the memories and despair at bay any longer, well.

Maybe it was time to wallow in them a little. Lord knew he deserved it after all this time.

Maybe that would help. Because whatever he had been doing for the past weeks, drowning himself in work, certainly hadn’t.

But first. First he had to find that blasted idiot boy and apologize. Jenkins did not apologize to many people, as a rule, but he had seen the look on Ezekiel’s face and immediately realized that he had been far from the first person to berate him like that. That was the _other_ reason that lashing out like that had been a mistake.

He seemed to be making those a lot lately.


End file.
